BACK TO THE PROBLEM - I
As they say the guns are silent but the word processors cannot be switched off that "easily". The old adage that the pen is mightier than the sword is reminded again. The ideas are important and we should not forget that Prabhakaran did not take up arms because some arms dealer or KP alias Pathmanathan who had a telephone conversation with Nambiar the UN official while the latter was in a toilet in the BIA at Katunayake, asked him to do so. Prabhakaran was influenced by the ideas of SJV Chelvanayakam and just as much Angulimala's teacher is also responsible for the murders due to the former the local Gandhis cannot evade responsibility for the murders carried out by Prabhakaran. The TULF leaders who referred to Prabhakaran affectionately as Thambi and to the other terrorists as our boys were not that innocent and their "sathyagrahas" though claimed to be non violent instigated people to violence and sowed the seeds of hatred.
We are all now in the middle of discussing the so called solution to the ethnic problem. The peace vendors who until the fifteenth of May were campaigning against the "war" have all of a sudden begun to sing hosannas to the soldiers (ranaviruvas). They write articles to the press and give interviews to the electronic media on the sacrifices made by the "ranaviruvas" and claiming of course at the same time what a murderer Prabhakaran was. Of course they end up their articles or interviews emphasising the importance of a political solution meaning devolution of power and ending up with federalism. What is the problem that these peace mongers turned "war mongers" in their terminology, think when they campaign for a so called political solution?
We can look at the problem and the solution from many angles. We had a terrorist problem and that problem has been solved now. A few bombs will explode here and there for sometime but terrorism has been defeated for good. It can be said that with Prabhakaran's killing the LTTE has been annihilated. There are still some terrorists living locally and abroad especially under the protection of the western countries and these scattered Tamil racists are protesting against the government of Sri Lanka with the connivance of some of the governments in the west. Thus there is no problem to be solved, except to ask for extradition of these terrorists including Nambiar's toilet friend Pathmanathan, and the military solution that has been given is a political solution as well. It is not necessary to quote a western political scientist to claim that military solutions are also political solutions as anybody would understand that the armies are political instruments. All military solutions are political solutions though there are political solutions that are not military solutions.
Then the President in his speech delivered in the Parliament made two important points. He said that there are no minorities and that there are only those who love the country and those who do not. We know that the British and the west have never loved our country and that they would not have paid the NGO and INGO peace mongers and others if the latter loved the country. It is not difficult to identify those who do not love the country and there is no reason to follow them in finding solutions to the problems of the country. These peace vendors have proved that they are failed agents of the west. They were shouting from rooftops that peace can be achieved only through negotiations with the terrorists. After more than two and half decades of peace talks what did we achieve? The LTTE gained and with the aid of the west they were armed to capture the whole of Sri Lanka and were waiting for an opportunity. Now peace that could not be achieved after two and half decades of negotiations has been achieved in only two and half years of military operations. Are we going trust these peace mongers when they claim that they are happy after the killing of Prabhakaran? How many of them are interested in finding out how the terrorist leader was killed? They want to know whether Prabhakaran was killed after he was taken to custody or before. Now who is interested in this question? It is the west and nobody else. Millilitre sized Miliband and his friends are hell bent to prove that the worst murderer to live in the recent past did not get a proper send off to hell. Perhaps they want to try the President, the Defence secretary and the commander of the army for so called war crimes in one of their "international show pieces" named tribunals. As the above named will be tried under the western law we do not need experts in law to predict the outcome. The west, especially Britain, having lost its "war" against Sri Lanka, a former colony, through their terrorist agents the LTTE now wants to take revenge and try to wear the usual bogus humanitarian democratic mask to mislead their citizens.
We tell all these "international jurists" that we are not interested in the way a mass murderer has died as no punishment is adequate in his case. We would request the government to appoint a commission of inquiry from countries other than the west to inquire into the acts of the LTTE against mankind. The government should take the initiative to organise the non western countries along the lines of former organisation of the non aligned countries. The western Christian modernity after five hundred years is on its way to extinction and a new paradigm, nay a new Chinthanaya is needed for the new world that will emerge towards the end of the century.
The President also said that we would try to find indigenous solutions to the problems and it is axiomatic that the west and their agents cannot offer any indigenous solutions. Further if there are no minorities meaning ethnic minorities then by definition there cannot be ethnic groups and hence there is no ethnic problem. The solution has to be found for an existing problem and not a problem that has been drilled into the minds of the elite by the British. As we have argued a few weeks ago the situation had changed after the imminent annihilation (which has been accomplished now) of the LTTE that was used by the British to find a solution to the so called ethnic problem. The Illankai Thamil Arasu Kadchi from its inception in 1949, that was before the Official Language Act, had been campaigning for a Federal state as a solution to the so called ethnic problem. In 1976 the Party changed gears and began its campaign for a separate state. Prabhakaran and the west only added arms to the campaign. It is this campaign that has been defeated militarily and hence politically and we do not have to think of so called alternatives to this defeated solution and the problem.
Devolution of power on an ethnic basis was proposed as an alternative to the separate state of the LTTE and the TUF (TULF) which was supposed to be a solution to a non existing ethnic problem. The Tamils in Sri Lanka do not and did not have a problem as being Tamils except for their unwillingness to recognise the Sinhala Buddhist culture as the significant culture in Sri Lanka. This problem goes back to the first half of the nineteenth century when the British favoured the Tamils in all the fields. It was discrimination against the majority Sinhalas and in 1956 steps were taken to correct some of these injustices. If Sinhala replaced English as the official language how could one claim that an injustice was caused against the Tamils? As we have argued the Burghers could have said they were discriminated by that act but not the ordinary Tamils who did not know any English. One should send a group of people to conduct a survey among the so called IDPs to find out what they want. Do they want devolution? Are they happy with some kind of development in the areas they were living.
(To be continued)
Professor Nalin de Silva
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